Harry Potter and the Gearr Ciaran
by speaker4thesilent
Summary: What would it take to change the course of What Was and return it to merely What May Be? First story of my upcoming Winterborn series.


This bug bit me a while ago and up until this point I have resisted valiantly. Yesterday my muse clubbed me over the head with her Clue Stick. Further resistance has proved to be futile.

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_My horn is forged of silver fire,_

_my shoulders bear leathern wings_

_I am the nightmare of your own desire,_

_I am the song that the Devil sings_

**Heather Alexander**, '_The Black Unicorn'_

Harry Potter and the Gearr Ciaran

Part one: The World's Ending

June 7th: London near Piccadilly Circus

Harry forced legs that felt far too much like jelly to support his weight as he let his wand arm drop to his side. Not even his current immensely irritating opponent could possibly live through the sort of trauma inflicted by white phosphorus shrapnel.

It would just take him a bit longer to die than a normal wizard.

Harry glared around at the destruction Draco had caused trying to escape the squad of Aurors hunting him and shook his head. _Oh well, _he thought, _I'm certain the Obliviators will appreciate the job security._

He called for a mediwitch, knowing the poor damn fool was beyond help, but needing to follow the proper forms anyway, but before he could turn and walk away, a laugh echoed from behind him.

"You think you've won?" Draco asked, his teeth clenched in pain as the Willy Pete burned further into his organs. The water the first Auror on the scene had called to put out the fires had only made them burn hotter. White phosphorus was nasty, nasty stuff. Hopefully-

"You're not even paying attention. Now that you think you've beaten me I'm-"

Harry cut the rant off. "I don't _think _I've beaten you, Malfoy, I know it. The fact that the only thing holding you together is that bastardized armor of yours was a clue." Harry had so hoped that his Hogwarts rival would have put the past behind him, but . . . Harry's mental train derailed. Why the devil was Draco laughing?

"It never occurred to you why I was in that bloody desert, did it?" the platinum blond asked, a rictus grin on his features despite his terrible wounds. "You didn't bother to look did you? Never investigated at all."

Now Draco had his attention. The little shite wasn't usually the sneaky sort. If he was implying that this whole damn mess had been a distraction . . .

"I never was much for sneaking," Draco admitted, grin still in place, "so it took me years to work out all the kinks. But I did it, and now it's too late." Harry was becoming seriously concerned by this point.

"What precisely did you do, Malfoy?" he growled out, a glare settling on his old nemesis.

Draco laughed. "I just gave certain interested persons a few trinkets and some information. It's poetic, really. If Purebloods can't rule you filthy Mudblood trash, we'll just let the Muggles wipe you all out."

Harry felt the blood drain from his face and his imagination go wild. "Draco, _what. Did. You. Do._"

But Draco was fading rapidly, even as he watched. The dark rituals he had preformed insufficient to keep his withered body alive here at the last. "Who would have believed that Muggles of all people would have learned how to split the atom?"

The mediwitch that had just kneeled down beside the now definitely deceased head of the Malfoy family simply looked puzzled, as did many of the Auror force within earshot. They simply did not have the foundation in the Sciences that would have told them what their fellow Pureblood meant. A couple that Harry recognized as half-bloods like himself understood enough to go very, very pale.

Harry, though, only noted this peripherally. "Oh, Merlin," he said as a sound that he'd put out of his mind during the chase penetrated at last. He'd initially dismissed it as some sort of fire alarm.

It was an air raid siren, and it likely hadn't been used since the end of the second world war. This time, however, it wasn't signaling planes and bombs, but missiles. Harry turned just in time to catch a glimpse of light off of titanium before a miniature sun flared to life over London.

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Had Draco cared about the result of his actions, he would have felt nothing but pride. In this case, as in many others over the years, he had known just enough to be dangerous without ever truly understanding the consequences of what he'd put into motion.

When Islamic terrorists stormed three separate facilities: two in territory once controlled by the now defunct USSR, the other in India. They were under the impression that a convert from England had given them the precise locations of secret research facilities of the Great Satan all over Europe and North America, as well as the extremely advanced technological devices that they'd used to get into position in the first place.

Draco had assumed that the half-score targets would be struck, and vaporized, thus providing a suitable revenge for his father, himself, and Purebloods in general. It never occurred to him that the Muggles might decide to respond in kind when they were attacked.

A single missile from the Indian facility was targeted at a magical settlement just inside the borders of Russia. One of the formerly Russian missiles was targeted at New York City's famous Salem Street, and just to top it off, another formerly Russian missile misfired and landed smack dab on top of Beijing.

It's called Mutually Assured Destruction for a _reason_.

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Same date, Alongside and apart from normal time/space: The Courts of the Daoine Sidhe

It was a normal day in the land the Fey had created for themselves after the dawning of the Age of Men. The occupants of Otherwhere drifted through the years as they had for countless lifetimes of mortal creatures. Untouched and unchanged by the passage of time. But, though Time could not enter Otherwhere to claim them, Death was under no such restriction.

The first strangled scream was a surprise. Cries of pain were infrequent. When that first cry was joined in chorus with a thousand other . . .

Where fire and radiation passed, the very life of the world was snuffed out for untold generations, nothing of the Fey's power could tough that ground.

And the Fey were, at their most basic point, aspects of creation. When it died, so did they.

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Gearr Ciaran: From Celtic, meaning 'Twilight Spear' That is, in fact, a hint : )

And that's a wrap. I decided to release this fist chapter as a stand-alone and to give myself some relief from my stick-wielding muse. Eventually I plan to create a sequel to this. Alright, soapbox time.

For many of the usual and customary reasons I have found myself utterly disgusted with the whole Harry Potter series. An author creates a world with problems as large as a Hungarian Horntail. Creates a society out of whole cloth! Adds in some racism, species-ism, gender-ism, etc.

Issues begging for solution!

She creates a main character that captivates people. Gives him a stereotypical shitty-ass home life, drags him over the coals at every turn . . .

And solves nothing. Nothing in the magical world changes. At the end of the books we have every mess we started with. Pureblood prejudice, entrenched _institutionalized_ slavery, a hopelessly corrupt government, a press even more useless(dare I say it) than CNN, and a generation of Dark lords/ladies in training. Hanlon's Razor only goes so far people! At some point it stops being 'coincidence' and starts being 'Enemy Action.'

I'll step off my soapbox now.

In any case, what began as an intriguing story with Epic potential became a strung-out lumbering abomination with so many inconsistencies between what people say and what they do that I found the later books in the series entirely unreadable.

I intend to fix that as best I can.

Hopefully you'll enjoy reading my attempt.


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